Maximising Learning and Teaching in Independent Schools: Moving ahead with Educational Neuroscience

Abstract

Educational neuroscience is a relatively new speciality, within the overall discipline of education, that seeks to deepen understanding of how the human brain learns and develops, by applying insights generated in mainstream neuroscience and conducting neuroscientific research. It is founded on the recognition that all learning occurs in the brain and all development results from changes occurring in the brain.

With a focus on maximising learning and teaching in independent schools, this Rapid Literature Review (RLR) identifies four main areas of quite recent neuroscientific research that are particularly applicable. This is research focussed on a) understanding the brain as a complex, dynamic system that self-organises through feedback; b) neural connectivity, synaptic plasticity and neuronal group selection; c) the neural interweaving of thought, feeling, and emotion; and d) the neurobiology of memory. Collectively, these four areas of research provide an image of the learning brain as complex, dynamic, highly variable, non-linear, and self-organising that is plastic (highly mouldable), embodied (inherently interconnected with the body, embedded (in multiple physical and social environments) emotional and predictive.

In explicating the role of memory in learning, the RLR incorporates the notion of a dynamic, global neuronal workspace in the brain allows for massive non-linear interconnectivity between the brain’s attention system, perceptual system, motor system, value system, and long-term memory. Contrary to a widely held view in education, working memory is not just a short-term, temporary depository, rather it is primarily concerned with regulating the brain’s selective attention, so as to focus on what matters.

Drawing on this body of research on how the human brain learns, the RLR posits six necessary conditions that are essential for maximising learning and teaching in schools. These require that each and every student is:

1) Paying attention and actively engaging with what they are learning 2) Repeating and rehearsing the object and contents of what they are learning 3) Monitoring their own errors and applying error feedback 4) Seeking and finding meaning and value in learning 5) Enabling positive and addressing negative emotions in learning and assessment 6) Thinking creatively, imaginatively, associatively, and analogically.

Neuroscientific evidence regarding how brains learn strongly suggests that, in any given classroom or learning environment, in any given lesson, all should be in full play for maximal learning to occur. If any of these necessary conditions are missing, learning will be diminished. The relationship between the learning brain, pedagogical implications and high impact teaching is set out in a diagram, designed to be of practical use for teachers in schools.

Central to the approach taken by this RLR, evidence-based teaching (EBT) is conceived as the explicit and judicious use of current neuroscientific evidence to inform the design of high-impact teaching strategies, tailored to enhance the learning outcomes of each and every student, in any given classroom, at any given school. EBT is therefore not a universal, rote application of educational theory to practice, nor is it a ‘cookbook’ approach to teaching strategies. Rather, it should combine the teacher’s understanding of the neuroscientific research evidence and their pedagogical knowledge and judgment, when teaching their students, in their classroom, consistent with the school’s values.